Posted on
Wednesday 28 March 2007

Andrew Sullivan writes The Daily Dish – a Conservative Blog for Atlantic Monthly, but, he’s a traditional Conservative rather than a "Bushie" [his latest book: The Conservative Soul – How We Lost It, How To Get It Back]. In his post yesterday, What Rove Has Wrought?, he writes:

I’m somewhat stunned by the ambivalence of many of my fellow Beltway pundits to the seriousness of the charges in the U.S. Attorneys scandal.

…

The central question is whether the Bush administration has used the U.S. Attorneys as a systematic weapon in targeting the opposition party, rather than rooting out corruption and malfeasance wherever it appears. The natural inference from the evidence so far – and the conflicting stories from the administration – is that the eight fired attorneys were not being partisan enough.

I’ll fight the impulse to say "Duh!" because I like Sullivan. He’s my kind of Conservative, such as that is possible. And he’s "awake." That’s more than I can say for most. At least he’s willing to wake up and see that BushCo hoodwinked the Conservatives just like the Christians. He quotes a recently published statistical study by Shields and Cragan that looks at the investigations of public officials by U.S. Attorneys since Bush took office. I’ve summarized that study in this table:

Officials Investigated by the Justice Department 2001 thru 2006

Dem.

Rep.

Ind.

Total

Dem/Rep

[p]

All Public Officials

298

67

10

375

4.4

<0.01

Local Public Officials Only

262

37

10

309

7.1

<0.01

State and Federal Officials

36

30

0

66

1.2

>0.05

The Tables in the article get confusing because the authors get a bit obtuse discussing the null cell issue in a Chi-squared table. But it doesn’t take a Math Degree to see the point. The Justice Department is prosecuting [persecuting] the hell out of Democrats at the local level, while maintaining parity at the State and National level. Sullivan’s conclusion? The Republicans are using the U.S. Attorneys to attack Democrats, but confining it to local officials where it’s "off the radar." Sullivan sees this as Karl Rove’s M.O. – dirty tricks that don’t show.

If he had said this two years ago, I would have been skeptical that it was partisan over-reading of data. But after learning about this Administration, and particularly after hearing it from a Conservative Republican, I believe it. It is Karl Rove’s M.O. So like Sullivan, I find it hard to get my mind around the depth of the dirt here. Let me say it again. The Republicans are using the U.S. Attorneys to attack Democrats, but confining it to local officials where it’s "off the radar."…